What Mike Gillis did on summer vacation

So, after a couple of weeks away, I see I haven’t missed much in Canuckistan. It appears that Mike Gillis’ offseason activities have basically amounted to Sweet F.A. And by that, I don’t mean signing Jason Garrison.

That being said, I’ve been preaching patience for weeks now, and the way CBA talks are going, I’m not sure Gillis has any reason to make any rash moves, other than to give me something new to doodle about. C’mon, Mike, it wouldn’t hurt to throow me a Doan, every once in awhile. Er, I meant bone.

But since we’re on the topic of Shane Doan…

…he is one of the few significant free agents that are still in play, and one that is definitely kicking the Canucks’ tires. (Hopefully Luongo pumped them up nice and full before he cleaned out his locker for the summer.) As it stands, however, it looks like the only way Gillis is going to land Doan is by offering him a contract with at least a four year term. We saw with the Garrison signing that Gillis was willing to be flexible on term in order to manage the cap hit and maintain the internal team salary structure. But at 36, Shane Doan is no Jason Garrison, and few if any GMs are going to offer a deal that takes him to 40.

Maybe Doan’s agent suffered a spellcheck #FAIL. Perhaps he got the results for "loan interest" when he tried to Google how much interest there was for Doan:

Sure, Doan will undoubtedly take a big fat contract to the bank this summer, but that’s about where the similarity ends: the longer the term, the lower the interest. And word is that the interest drops significantly at the three year mark.

This is a lesson that Alex Semin learned earlier this summer. Fortunately he realized that his his best option for staying in the NHL was to take a one year deal and try to earn himself more term based on performance. All he needed to do was find a team that was shooting blanks and desparate enough to blow a big wad to try and generate new life after years of trying unsuccessfully:

And yes, Semin has an altogether more serious spellchecker issue that isn’t going to go away any time soon.

But who am I kidding? You’re all watching the Olympics and don’t really care how the Canucks spent their summer vacation. Well, I have something for you as well. With all the different acronyms for the various sporting organizations, here’s a handy chart to help you differentiate between two of the largest, and most well known: